The first answer is that innovation can be channelled towards military or surveillance technology instead. The government has no problem with research into facial recognition, enterprise software, drones, and whatnot. Under the so called 'military-civil fusion' strategy its if anything encouraged and heavily bolstered.
Another point that has become fairly popular among the more conservative or nationalist Chinese intellectuals is that free expression in the workplace is if anything, harming the US because it's seen as divisive and hindering research. There were a lot of comments with negative overtones when it came to BLM, and stuff like the internal Google Maven protests. For a lot of nationalist Chinese commentators free expression in the West is seen as damaging state capacity and the ability of large firms to work effectively.
I don't see how this could possible benefit them over any measurable amount of time. Sure, they can do private repos for sensitive stuff, but the benefit of an open system like github is not in the closed off stuff... it is in the openness and propensity to inspire collaboration. Without the openness, they will only fall behind from the second they enable their one way information shield.
I get the sense from reading this that we're both aware that with China that won't be the case.
> Basically, they give out any innovations they create, while shielding themselves from any external innovation.
In a sense I feel like this relies on an exaggeration of the benefits and requirements of open source that most people in the west would have. Thinking about it right now I can see two questions.
1) Do we really need a free and open (as in free speech) internet to bring many people's code contributions and skills together?
2) Is having a walled off system actually better, on the reasoning that developers in China make the best "chinese software" (meaning software that will do well in or be useful to China)?
I think the answer to the first is that the need for free speech for open source at first seems necessary, and is certainly still helpful, but not ultimately needed for this to work. China can block topics like on any other site and chances are the people that still want to contribute ultimately will, just like people still use Wechat, Baidu, etc. I would think that as it stands you can still have a large group of hard-working contributors without some 'sensitive' topics coming up. I really think that the benefits of the open source model aren't as tied to the principles of western countries as a lot of people would initially assume, myself included.
The second question might be worth looking into some more, in terms of market research and what is successful in China. Plus Chinese developers are probably more used to having to work with the government in regards to censorship and surveillance, which GitHub could shut the doors on pretty fast.
Either way I don't think that having restricted topics is going to cripple the benefits of having a much larger contributor/talent pool and open source code. Not having freedoms isn't as good of course but I don't think open source software depends on them as much as some might say.
I suspect, so long as they can continue to provide good lives for their professional class, the country will continue to grow in world influence. The professionals that drive growth and innovation probably desire to live in a less authoritarian society, but life is generally good enough for them to remain complacent, and turn a blind-eye to injustice.
This is all relative. In an absolute sense, China's level of economic development on Bulgaria, Mexico or Kazakstan. They've had a long period of high growth, but that's only because of the abject poverty the Maoists left the country in. Before Deng's reforms, the country was essentially North Korea.
China's prosperity is much more of a "most-improved award" rather than a gold medal. Their current system has certainly proved better than Stalinism, but that's a pretty low bar. There's no reason to believe that Xi Jinping thought can produce an economy that in any way is competitive with liberal capitalist democracy.
Certainly substantially behind the level of development found in the capitols of highly developed nations, like Washington DC[5] ($85k), London ($74k), or Tokyo[6] ($69k).
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Turkish_provinces_by_G... [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Thai_provinces_by_GPP [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_regions_by_GDP_(P... [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_prefectures_b...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP_(PPP)_pe...
For example, if you take the Tokyo Metro Area, you find a GDP per capita of 48k, with a PPP ratio of 0.98 we get 48k USD PPP.
Comparing it to the Beijing Metro Area you have a 39k USD PPP.
This took around 4 minutes to do for the two cities, so I really don't think it's a quantity of rigor you should pay for, nor an unreasonable amount of scrutiny for an internet comment at all. I was just trying to get the commenter to realize the issue with using two completely different data series in a comparison.
You can also compare for example Jiangsu and South Kanto to find similar numbers.
Can you demonstrate your principles with your other comment [0], by using “a single source that contains the numbers” of many of the countries and claims you mentioned in that comment?
How do we know your arguments aren’t “based on really really shaky data”?
Traveling through US or Europe you won't find people living in cinderblock shacks with a dirt floor and no plumbing. In China it's still the norm outside of cities.
There's not anybody starving to death, but I wouldn't consider China a wealthy country, not even close. There's very wealthy areas but a large fraction of the population still survives on a few thousand dollars a year.
I've never met a homeless person that was starving and many of them turn down free food because they don't need it.
As far as outsourcing, look what China is doing in Africa. Plenty of outsourcing in appalling conditions
What outside people don't see, and especially ones who thump their chests thinking they've seen all of China by being to some small town is that china has probably thousand times more of such small towns, and villages than 1m+ cities. And these are where most of Chinese live.
There are still many places in China with such level of destitution where even moving to a township centre from a village is an achievement of a lifetime to an average person.
While it is true that hundreds of millions of Chinese live moderately prosperous lives, and enjoy many of the same luxuries that people in developed countries do, there are also hundreds of millions of Chinese who are still living in relative poverty (both relative to people in developed countries, and relative to the country's own urban, educated class).
In November last year the government declared that they had met their target to lift all of China out of extreme poverty by 2020, but that just means that nobody lives on a dollar a day any more. There are still a lot of subsistence farmers in rural areas, and there is still a large underclass that powers the urban economy by working for very low wages in factories, on delivery routes and so on.
China has come a long way in a relatively short period of time, and that's worth applauding, but it still faces some big challenges in raising the quality of life for all its citizens. I'm not an economist, but I expect that there will be a point where the growth can't continue because there won't be enough of an underclass to provide all the services that the current "middle" class takes for granted. I think the government is hoping that by that point either automation or outsourcing will be able to fill the gap.
Fixation on only economy and relative development indexes distract from the measure that matter: comprehensive national power or other similar composite measures. Apart from 1st rate turbojets engines and semiconductors, China has indigenous capability for nearly every sector. Compared to US, no other country is remotely competitive in a comprehensive sense. Relative measures only disguises how far China has come in terms of national capabilities, very few countries have: indigenous nuke, space, military, light/heavy industries, tech, media etc. When US policy makers reference peer competition, it's not referring to other OECD countries, it's referring to China because no one else has similar levels of comprehensive hard/soft power to remotely matter.
"Most improved" hides the fact that China holds the silver medal after brief development period, or that the gap between gold and silver are closer than gap between bronze and no-name junior varsity bench player. In that sense, the Chinese system (tuned to specific Chinese conditions) has already out competed nearly everyone else when considering aggregate factors to general power which enables prosperity. The question is whether Xi thought can make China competitive enough with US to create multipolar world. Seeing as to how everyone is hedging against Sino/US coldwar, right now it's seems to be between strong maybe and probably. Ultimately, Chinese scales means never reaching per capita parity can still outcompete in general. Doing so as middle income country with massive income disparity and relative easier gains only works in Xi's favour.
Isn't it already? Speaking broadly of economic trends for the past 30 years, China has dominated manufacturing, at levels of increasing sophistication. To the extent it's running into issues, it's been a victim of its own success: laborers in China are increasingly too expensive for China to be a cost effective exporter at the low end. And in exchange it's developed Shenzhen, which has pretty much no competition in its niche. And as far as tech goes, on the whole China is still behind the USA, but at the same time solidly ahead of every other country. The entirety of the EU area doesn't have a Baidu or Bytedance, let alone a Tencent or Alibaba.
Even within their area of strength, manufacturing, China severely lags the liberal democracies. On a per capita basis, its manufacturing output is more than three times lower than Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Korea, Sweden or the Netherlands. It even produces less than half per capita as the US or UK, who don't even specialize in manufacturing. China is barely above Brazil or Turkey on a per capita metric.
And outside manufacturing, China's level of development is abysmal. It produces virtually nothing competitive in the service sector. China exports essentially zero financial services, media, software, professional services, or travel services. China has internally developed barely any internationally successful pharmaceuticals, Internet properties, film or television franchises, marketable brand names, banking franchises, auto models, jet aircraft, or microprocessors.
The success of China's tech companies is almost certainly because the Chinese government doesn't allow much stronger American competitors to enter the market. The reason Europe doesn't have a Baidu is because Google was allowed to compete in Europe. The entire Chinese tech industry's sole global success has been TikTok. The inability to compete on the global market proves that the Chinese tech industry does not measure up to their American counterparts. This is corroborated by the fact that not a single major software project has ever come out of China.
Alibaba/Aliexpress are massive for consumer online shopping, particularly in Russia & Eastern Europe. Alipay payments are increasingly accepted across SE Asia. JD.com (which nobody ever hears about, but is considerably larger than Ali) operates directly and indirectly in many SE Asian countries.
Tencent Games owns and operates a huge slew of globally popular games, including Fortnite, League of Legends, the Supercell suite (Brawl Stars, Clash of Clans etc). Yes, most of these games are still produced primarily in the West, but for long?
Trip.com has been run out of China since 2017 since it was acquired by Ctrip. Meituan/Dianping dominate food delivery in China and are started to branch out to other markets like Australia and Singapore.
That’s just it. It’s grown because it had massive amounts of cheap labour but now it doesn’t. Can they transition into a competitive economy up the food chain?
Far from being worse than liberal capitalist economies - which are the majority of the world - it's 73 in GDP PPP per capita out of 193 - solidly above average.
It's also not had a period of high growth, it is still having a period of high growth, with 2.4% growth in 2020 which is by far the highest out of all major economies, and a predicted 7.3% next year. This is better than a lot of low income countries, coming from a medium-high income country.
It's also set on escaping the middle income trap in 2-5 years as GDP per capita goes above 12500$, which is something that most liberal capitalist economies cannot achieve.
So no, it's really not just in relative sense. In performance with its current position, it really is doing better than alternate models of liberal capitalism, and by quite a margin.
I don't support the political reality that makes it work at all, but it is clear that liberal capitalism is not the undisputed king anymore.
Compared to countries with a similar culture/demographics: Hong Kong, Korea, Singaporem Japan and Taiwan, mainland China's growth has been way slower.
>It's also set on escaping the middle income trap in 2-5 years as GDP per capita goes above 12500$, which is something that most liberal capitalist economies cannot achieve.
This is still only around a fourth of the GDP per capita in the other East Asian countries.
As for the rest, you're completely missing the point. Liberal capitalism's single greatest issue for the developing world is the middle income trap.
CCP China should build monuments to President Bush (#41) and President Clinton. Otherwise they would have went the way of the USSR.
edit: and President Bush (#43) for making most-favored-nation trading status with CCP China permanent.
Most-favored-nation (MFN) trade status renewal came with conditions. Few if any were met by CCP China and yet American administrations continually renewed MFN for CCP China. Ultimately President Bush (#43) made it permanent.
They opened the door that enabled CCP China to drink the West's milkshake.
It probably just doesn't hurt CCP enough to matter in the short term. It'll probably take closer to half a century before we can truly understand if the cumulative effects of the pain will amount to anything significant.
If Facebook and Google ran ads all over China, a nice big cut of that revenue goes to the IRS instead of China's government.
None of these transactions are zero-sum and tech isn't the only thing in the world that matters.
The US and maybe western Europe could be in a similar position, if they wanted to.
IMO the reason you don't want to be isolationist(as a big country) is more about political clout than tech. China has no "soft power" because their firewall works both ways.
The US and western Europe have military prescence and political allies worldwide because the free flow of information and technology fosters all sorts of political, corporate, and cultural mixing.
What influence China has on its neighbors (and worldwide to an extent) is maintained through pressure and threats, because frankly, their ultra nationalist policies just don't make many friends. I personally don't think this is sustainable long term but it is yet to be seen. Instead of allies wanting you to succeed, other nations are encouraged to obstruct as much as possible to weaken you and your unwelcome influence. You can see this unfolding in the last few years with increasing tariff and trade restrictions on China. And I don't see it letting up until Xi is out
>Love how you robbed the Intercom content and css 1:1 and still being upvoted. Well, all the best with sales.
>Thank you for your reply. Intercom is way more advanced. About clone, All big companies take design and ideas from each other, without any issues. So am not new to game. t "Picasso had a saying -- 'good artists copy; great artists steal' -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." Steve Jobs
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1351114653263409156
Doesn't look good for the US.
Their style of governing is very clearly not super robust. If it were they wouldn't need to so extremely tightly control their people in every possible manner. They regularly reveal how fragile the system is in their behavior, including how very easily their party ego is injured (which partially reveals how fragile they view their own position, that they're so obsessed with maintaining the facade of omnipotence; they fear any cracks). That also doesn't mean it's a house of cards, the CCP has proven they have staying power, even if it's expensive ground to hold.
If the US hadn't retreated from diplomacy in favor of acting more like a mob boss, China would have been hurt far more. Most countries are looking to move away from Australia, but the absence of a countervailing power is what's stopping them.
Alternatively, the CCP got more aggressive with their suppressive tactics because of the US's diplomatic retreat, but I dont think this is the case. I think the CCP's behavior is a natural consequence of Xi Jinping basically giving himself a life term. With no opportunity to ever lead the party through a peaceful transfer of power, all the leadership hopefuls will probably be looking for alternative solutions. And even if they aren't, Xi is almost certainly gonna be paranoid that they are, and that would mean increasingly severe crackdowns on the people of the country.